To know or not to know? How looking at payoffs signals selfish behavior

TL;DR

This study investigates how observing or engaging in payoff look-at behavior signals selfishness in social dilemmas, revealing complex effects including moral cleansing that influence interpretations of such actions.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence on how payoff observation signals selfishness and explores the discrepancy between actual behavior and self-reports in social dilemmas.

Findings

Looking at payoffs signals selfish behavior

Self-reports correlate with selfishness in high-looking individuals

Actual looking may trigger moral cleansing effects

Abstract

In daily life, subjects often face a social dilemma in two stages. In Stage 1, they recognize the social dilemma structure of the decision problem at hand (a tension between personal interest and collective interest); in Stage 2, they have to choose between gathering additional information to learn the exact payoffs corresponding to each of the two options or making a choice without looking at the payoffs. While previous theoretical research suggests that the mere act of considering one's strategic options in a social dilemma will be met with distrust, no experimental study has tested this hypothesis. What does "looking at payoffs" signal in observers? Do observers' beliefs actually match decision makers' intentions? Experiment 1 shows that the actual action of looking at payoffs signals selfish behavior, but it does not actually mean so. Experiments 2 and 3 show that, when the action of looking at payoffs is replaced by a self-report question asking the extent to which participants look at payoffs in their everyday lives, subjects in high looking mode are indeed more selfish than those in low looking mode, and this is correctly predicted by observers. These results support Rand and colleagues' Social Heuristics Hypothesis and the novel "cooperate without looking" model by Yoeli, Hoffman, and Nowak. However, Experiment 1 shows that actual looking may lead to different results, possibly caused by the emergence of a moral cleansing effect.